Priority Part 1
by HKhelloKitty
Summary: A Naruto fanfiction featured primarily Sasuke and an OC of my own, Arina. Hopefully Sasuke and other Naruto characters don't turn out to be too out of character, I can't make any promises though.


"Arina...?" Sasuke's voice trailed off with the oh-so-familiar name.

He clutched the small piece of paper in his hand tightly and look out ahead of him.

"Who's Arina, Sasuke-kun?" a hint of worry weaved through Karin's words. That sounded like a girl's name and the fact that he was mumbling this Arina's name and not hers left her a bit uneasy.

"...No one." Sasuke responded after thinking even deeper into his thoughts.

Sasuke continued to stare out before him, Karin's slight worry was changing into a full-blown panic attack, and Suigetsu was staring at Sasuke and his strange behavior.

Sasuke turned and looked back at Karin and Suigetsu.

"What is it?" Suigetsu asked, Sasuke's awkward behavior beginning to irritate him more than anything else.

"You two... occupy yourselves. I need to take care of some things." Sasuke announced, his normal composure returning.

"Can I come, Sasuke-kun?" Karin cooed, fluttering her lashes at him.

"No."

Karin sighed in disappointment. She wished Sasuke would take her everywhere he went. She wished she could be stuck with Sasuke instead of Suigetsu. And then, it suddenly came to her. "Occupy yourselves?"

"Wait, Sasuke. If you're going somewhere, you expect me to hang around with Suigetsu?" Karin ranted.

"You suck, Sasuke. You don't want to be alone with this chick either, you ought to have some kind of empathy towards me."

Sasuke gave them an annoyed look.

"Occupy yourselves. Whether or not you two decide on occupying yourselves with one another is completely up to you."

And with that, Sasuke left.

It was around seven in the evening, Sasuke figured he could make it to the Hidden Leaf Village in around two more hours if he kept going non-stop. Then he thought about it. Would it really be a good idea to show up on her doorstep at around nine at night? Not to mention whatever hard time the Leaf ninja back at the Village would inevitably give him once he managed to even get within one thousand feet of the Village's main entrance. He figured it didn't really matter either way. The thing that was going to really nag at him was his lack of remaining stamina. He'd been walking non-stop for nearly two hours already, he was already near drained back when he was with Suigetsu and Karin, and his feet were killing him. Not to mention he was still clutching that piece of paper like a deprived idiot. He forcefully shoved the note into his pocket and stopped at a nearby tea house.

Hello, Sasuke...

It's been a really long time. The current date while I'm writing this, it's May 16th, 2011. I haven't seen you since when? 2008? Something like that. I not-so-recently got news about your departure from the Leaf Village in an attempt to seek out Orochimaru. I can't say I agree with your decision making skills, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do.

I hope you're okay. Well, as okay as you can possibly be. I know life's been really hard for you since that day nearly 10 years ago now... The truth of the matter is, I've been thinking about you quite a bit in these recent times. You've been crossing my mind a lot lately. I'm not sure if it's just curiosity or if I'm subconsciously worried about you because I feel something bad is going to happen to you? I don't know.

I don't know what I'm gonna do with this after I write this. I don't have anywhere to send it, no one knows your exact whereabouts. You've managed to climb up the ranks, you've become an official S-Rank Rouge Criminal/Missing Nin in the eyes of the Hidden Leaf Village. Anyways, I'll send this note into the current of the strong wind. I guess if it manages to make its way to you somehow, you really are meant to see this, huh? Something along the lines of destiny or fate. Yes, something like that.

Either way, if you're reading this, I'd like you to come see me, Sasuke-kun. Whenever you get the chance. You know, once you finish your vengeful activities, if you get bored, if you just happen to be in the area, whatever the situation turns out to be. Just come see me please. You know where I'll be.

~Arina~

Sitting alone at one of the small outdoor tables at that small teahouse Sasuke stopped by, he went over this note for the umpteenth time. He took another sip of the tea he'd ordered and read over the last paragraph again.

Something about that last paragraph tugged at his brain relentlessly. "Just come see me please. You know where I'll be." Sasuke gently closed his eyes and mentally scolded himself. That's exactly what he was doing now, going to go see her 'please'. And the other aggravating thing, he did know where she'd be. He had no doubt in his mind. He couldn't even pretend he didn't know, not even to himself.

The date of the note, she said it was May 16th. A couple of months ago. It was now the very beginning of September. He wondered if she had possibly forgotten all about this note she "sent into the current of the strong wind" nearly four months ago. He thought about the rest of that paragraph. Destiny, fate. That's how she referred to it.

"Stupid girls..." Sasuke mumbled under his breath.

He personally preferred to call it a freakishly scary coincidence. The fact that she merely threw this thing into the air one day and it managed to literally smack him in the face on some random day was beyond him. But girls, he'd managed to find out, liked to sugarcoat things. They liked to make things sound nice and pretty. They believed in petty things such as destiny, fate...love even.

After stalling some time at this tea house, he finally decided to get up and leave, starting his journey once again now an hour later. The current time, eight thirty in the evening. Almost nighttime.

As the case had been for months now, Sasuke was crossing her mind again as she lie in her bed alone in her bedroom. She liked him no doubt, but she wouldn't allow herself to think that she loved him. Well, at least not yet. She felt that if she was going to love someone, they should at least show some kind of attachment too. The fact that love and Sasuke were swirling through her mind side by side disappointed her. She figured Sasuke didn't feel that way and even if he did, she'd never know it. He was too withdrawn. And for all she knew, Sasuke could have simply disregarded her as some other crazy girl with an insane infatuation for him. It was so much more than that though...

To her surprise, that note she'd written and thrown up to the heavens actucally didn't nag her too much. She thought about what she had wrote. If that note does manage to find Sasuke, it had to be destiny. If that happened, she swore she'd go through the village screaming "There is a God!" through both the early day and the late night hours.

But still, she did worry about Sasuke's overall well-being. She worried as if she were his mother, as if he were his child. She'd tried to convince herself. Sasuke's a big boy, he can handle himself. She couldn't do it. He was hasty and headstrong. The whole, act now think later thing really didn't fly well with Arina. She didn't like the mentality when Sasuke practiced it, and really couldn't stand it in anyone else either for that matter.

Sasuke had been gone for three years now. She was now 16, Sasuke 17. Three years didn't quite seen like a long time but when you break it down a little bit, that was 1095 days and that's a pretty decent amount of time.

It was a slow and quiet Friday night. So slow in fact that it was only nine o'clock and Arina was already contemplating the idea of just going to sleep right there and then. She got up and prepared to go to bed. She was heading in early tonight. Perhaps she'll get some sleep tonight. Or maybe she'll get in bed by 9:30, stare at the ceiling until about one in the morning, and then go to sleep. She'd find out at one in the morning.

Sasuke had learned something about himself. He was extremely talented at wasting time, a professional time waster. He dilly-dallied around for past two and a half hours. Walking slowly, literally taking in all of his surroundings, stopping at a store or two. He'd even decided to buy Arina a little gift. He found it to be beneath him, buying a gift for someone. But when he went into that little gift shop, the idea of buying her something he thought she would like almost immeadiately popped in his head and nagged at him until he finally decided to buy her a gift. So there he was at eleven o'clock at night, holding this little cute pink girly trinket-like thing. He wasn't even sure what it was exactly but it was cutesy and had all those girl colors in it, the pinks, the purples, the light blues, with the little bits a pastel yellow every now and then. He figured it was right up her alley.

He was soon approaching the Hidden Leaf Village's main entrance and to his surprise, no weak, so-called 'ambushes' had occured. At least not yet. He still didn't let his guard down. He gently, unlike he did with Arina's note which was now crumpled sloppily deep in his pants pocket, put the girly tricket-thing he wouldn't be caught dead with into his pocket as he continued to calmly stroll closer and closer to the Village.

The only issue with this Village was that though it wasn't small, word spread quickly. Insanely so. If the fact that Sasuke had gotten this close to the Village had probably already hit the ears of just about every live person in the Village, he wouldn't be surprised. It would be perfect it he could just mosy on in, no one would notice him and then he could just mosy right on back out. However, things never worked like that, especially not in the ninja world.

He was about 100 feet from the Village's main gate. He had yet to be attacked but there were those two guardmen who were always there around the clock. Sasuke could tell they had spotted him, the way the two men would furtively exchange glances and then glance casually at him. They were annoying, menacing almost. It was obvious they were pretending to ignore him. Why? He questioned in his mind. He didn't trust it. He knew about the Leaf Ninja. If you let your guard down too much, they'd get right up underneath you and you'd suffer a humiliating defeat at the least. He should know. He used to be one.

Instinctively, he activated his Sharingan. He was a rogue ninja who had just crossed the border of becoming a damn near S-Rank criminal. He was considered a great potential threat to the Village and its safety. So much of a threat that just about all the ANBU members had his face on their assassination lists. The fact that he was being utterly ignored was the result of one of two things. One, they're about to do something to him but first they want to make it seem like they have no intention of interfering with him. Or two, they really are just a bunch of tired, lazy guardmen who couldn't care less whether or not he intended on killing everyone in the Village. But then again, there is the possibility they didn't know him...? Sasuke shook the idea out of his head. They knew his face even before he'd left the Village three years ago, one had known him since he was little boy. It would have been ideal if the second scenario was to be the case but once again, things rarely, if ever, work out the way you wish them to.

Looking through his Sharingan, he considered the possibility of some kind of genjutsu. No, no genjutsu. He checked his senses, trying to see if he could sense any other sources of chakra. Perhaps he was surrounded? No, no other sources of chakra other than the two men before him and his own. He was walking slowly towards the two men, their stupid facade really starting to aggravate him. He decided he ought to just knock them out, just to be on the safe side and avoid any possible interferences.

Sasuke disappeared into thin air. The two men scanned the area, looking for some sign of the man.

"You don't think he infiltrated into the village, do you?" one of the guardmen asked.

The other shook his head in response.

"Just keep your guard up." the other guardman warned.

Sasuke shot out of the ground nearly five minutes later, his sword drawn, ready to give them a blow that wouldn't kill them, but would definitely leave them immobilized.

The second guardman reached into his weapon pack and withdrew a kunai in order to block the attack. Futile. Sasuke's sword sliced through the kunai. Sasuke managed a pretty good cut into the man's face before the man was able to dodge the rest of the attack. Sasuke started for the other guardman.

The man stared at Sasuke. Sasuke charged at him and stopped a mere six inches short. The other guardman came at him fast. Sasuke jumped up into the air and majestically attacked the two of them at once with a Fire-Style Jutsu. He quickly finished them with a quick slice of his sword before the two men hit the ground.

Sasuke's expression hadn't changed throughout the entire set. His sword stained with blood, he looked at it and then back at the men. They weren't dead, but they'd soon be on their way if they stayed there untreated for long.

His thoughts trailed over to Arina. What would she think of this? She wouldn't be proud to say in the least, he knew that much. But then it crossed his mind, why does he care what she thinks or how she feels? She knew him. She shouldn't be surprised. He'd killed his brother already, he'd killed Danzo, and had threatened to kill Kakashi on mulitple accounts. But he had to admit, this was the first time he would've killed someone who hadn't deserved death. At least not in his eyes. Then this crossed his mind as well, they did deserve death. They were basking in the so-called "peace" his clan was sacrificed for. Everyone in the village deserved the same fate. Even Arina? He actually, as horrible as it sounded to even himself, hadn't decided yet. He figured she'd say or do something when he saw her this time around that would seal her fate. He'd be lenient though.

After that hour-long debacle, it was officially midnight. He went into the Village and casually made his way to Arina's house, hoping no one would spot him. He was sure someone would, someone he would probably want to see the least. Somebody like Ino or Sakura. Or in the worst case scenario, Naruto. Then he remembered, Naruto did live in the Hidden Leaf Village and if Naruto saw him, Sasuke would end up having another entire showdown with Naruto once again. He decided to hightail it to Arina's.

He knocked on the door of the small house. Arina had finally actually started to sleep when that knock resonanted through the house.

"What time is it?"

She glanced over at the clock. 00:15.

"Who the hell...?"

Arina sleepily made her way to the door. Groggily, she looked through the peep hole. It was someone familiar. Someone who almost looked at lot like Sasuke. She opened the door.

It was Sasuke.

"Sasuke? What are you doing here?" she got the strange urge to fix her hair somewhat.

He flashed her the letter she'd written nearly four months ago.

"Are you serious...?" she questions, disbelief written not only across her face, but all across her entire being.


End file.
